


The Scent of Memory

by gaylock, gaysandcrime



Series: The Aftermath [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Flowers, Guilt, Nightmares, Post-Reichenbach, Spiders, TRF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 13:51:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8754505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaylock/pseuds/gaylock, https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaysandcrime/pseuds/gaysandcrime
Summary: Mycroft is aware that Sherlock's death was a ruse. He knows this, he does. But knowing it doesn't stop the panic he feels when watching the CCTV footage of the fall, and it certainly doesn't stop the nightmares.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a wonderful short story by Edoardo Albert called Funeral Flowers that I read somewhere on the internet. Enjoy.

Mycroft pays the taxi driver and then watches as the cab drives away. The driver had not spoken during the journey. Mycroft had sat in the back, looking out but not seeing.

The building he stands in front of does not look like an undertaker’s office. Plate glass windows hold him in reflection but he does not look as he remembers. Or maybe he just does not remember how he looks. He isn't sure.

He can't see a door. He looks around, but there does not seem to be any other way in so he steps closer to the building and stops. A section of the glass slides open. The reception is glass and marble and steel and the receptionist is their human equivalent: clear, calm and cool. And, of course, beautiful. He thinks he should recognize her, her dark hair and sharp eyes, but can't seem to focus his thoughts enough to pull the memory forward.

He goes in, and the glass slides closed behind him. He can't see out through it. Instead, he sees himself, repeated again and again, disappearing into infinity.

Mycroft sniffs. The air is perfumed; a distant hint of summer meadows sleeping in the sun. Not what he had expected of an undertaker. But he supposes that even death is corporate now.

“How can I help you?” the receptionist asks. Her tongue flicks, dampening her lips. Saliva glitters like diamonds on the red lipstick.

“I have an appointment,” he said. “About my..." He pauses to think. A thought, an image, flits through his mind, too quickly for him to catch it. He shrugs and turns back to the receptionist. "About my...brother.” He barely stops himself from making it a question, thinking that _he should know this already, and why doesn't he know it?_ The woman's voice cuts his thoughts off.

“Oh, of course. Mr. Holmes. We’ve been expecting you. If you would like to go through, the boss will see you right away.” She nods towards the corridor that disappears behind her into a haze of fluorescent light.

“Right. Thank you.”

“Mr. Holmes, we’re all very sorry, but we are here to ensure that your brother will never be lost to you.”

“Pardon?” 

“If you go through, the boss will explain everything.” She turns back to her desk.

Mycroft walks past the receptionist and down the corridor. There is a door at the end. It is closed, but as he nears it the door opens and he sees a man standing there. He feels himself freeze, everything shuts down, time seeming to slow to a halt. He can feel a headache beginning to pound in the back of his skull, and the feeling of a memory sitting just out of reach returns. Doesn't he know those eyes? Doesn't he remember that face, from somewhere, somehow? Doesn't he?

“Mr. Holmes?”

The man's voice jolts him out of his mind and time speeds up again. The feeling that he has forgotten something recedes and Mycroft smiles. “Yes, that’s right. I have an appointment.”

“Of course. Please, come in. Sit down.” Mycroft makes the first movement towards shaking hands, but the man has already retreated to his side of the desk. No other option left, Mycroft sits down. The man leans forward with his fingers beneath his chin, hands together as if in prayer. Something about the gesture sends a jolt of confusion and apprehension through Mycroft, and he narrows his eyes to look at the man's hands more carefully.

They are beautiful fingers. Long, but not too thin. Perfect nails too, pink to their tips and their quicks.

“You’re not married,” Mycroft says, then wonders why. He twists nervously at the golden ring on his own finger, feeling fear tickle the back of his mind.

“Observant,” the man smiles slightly. “No, it is true that I have never married. I consider myself married to my work.”

Those words make the tickle of fear grow stronger, and Mycroft swallows. His hands twist together in his lap. “I’m sorry. It was rude to ask.”

“Nonsense, Mr. Holmes, nonsense. This is a difficult time for you. I appreciate that. May I get you something?”

“No, thank you very much.”

“Maybe later?”

“Maybe.” The smell he had noticed before is even stronger in here. He can’t place it. It has something of spring to it, and something of summer. It reminds him of bees. He cannot fathom why.

“Ah, I see you have noticed?” The man smiles.

“Noticed what?”

“The particular aroma that blesses our establishment.” He smiles again. It doesn't reach his eyes, but Mycroft doesn't notice.

“What is it? I can’t place it.”

“Can’t you guess? No, what am I saying, of course, you can’t."

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

The man stands up, coming around from behind the desk to perch himself on its edge.

“Mr. Holmes, Mycroft. This is not a normal place of rest, as you can no doubt appreciate. We are not undertakers. Our philosophy here is very different. We do not burn people. We do not bury them. This is the modern day, and yet those barbarous customs still survive. Here, we believe the departed should be treated with respect. Here, we strive to preserve the departed as their loved ones remember them.”

Mycroft is surprised at the informal address, but shrugs it off, thinking that he must have introduced himself at some point by his first name. He cannot remember, but that doesn't seem important at the moment. “Preserve? You don’t mean taxidermy?”

“Nothing so old-fashioned as that. Perhaps it would be best if I showed you some pictures from our catalog."

Mycroft is directed to pick up the heavy book that lay on the desk. There is a picture of a man, lying down as if he were asleep but for a few moments and would soon wake.

Mycroft looks up.

“He is dead?” he asks. He feels wonder and a bit of uneasiness. 

“Departed, Mycroft; departed. Nobody is truly dead while we keep them in our hearts.” He gestures at the book. “Take a look. Satisfy yourself that your brother is in safe hands. Now, are you sure about that cup of tea?”

He looks up again, distracted from the picture of the dead man.

“What? Oh, yes. Thank you, tea would be lovely.” He wonders for a moment why he had rejected the tea before. He doesn't remember.

The man leaves the room. He moves as if no mark will be left, no matter the surface he walks upon. Mycroft goes back to looking at the pictures in the book.

He can't believe that these people are dead. But they are, and he leafs through the pages of the book, staring at each new body, more perfect, more beautiful than the one before. He frowns for a moment at one of them, that feeling of forgetting something flitting once again at the edges of his consciousness. 

Mycroft puts the catalog down and takes a deep breath. His eyes scan the room but they aren't looking for anything, aren't seeing anything at all. He searches his memory for the image of his brother but he can't seem to picture him. Details, fragments, yes. But not the whole man. Already the memory is fading.

A spider crawls across the desk and stops next to Mycroft’s hand, its two front legs feeling the air, tasting the scent it carried.

He doesn't see it. His memory is hoarding everything it can find of his brother, pulling out memories from where they had been hidden, looking at them again and then packing them away somewhere safer.  _Something about a game, flashes of a needle, gun shots ringing through the air, and panic, always panic and fear._

Then he sees the spider. He jerks his hand away, but the spider does not move. Its front legs taste the air currents, but it doesn't run.

Mycroft feels disgust and fear well up inside of him, and he looks for something to hit it with, but there is only the book on the desk. He looks around the office, but it is bare and functional.

When he looks back the spider is gone.

He leans over, peering at the floor, trying to see where the spider has disappeared to. He doesn't like the idea of it crawling around down there, but he sees nothing.

Behind him, the door opens. He twists around and sees the other man coming in carrying a tray with two cups upon it.

“Your tea,” the man says, setting the tray down. His hands move back up to rest under his chin, prayerlike and graceful.

Mycroft feels his confusion and fear well up, his brain suddenly too full of thought. Then he breathes in, and the smell he can't quite place flows through his lungs; suddenly everything goes quiet again. Suddenly, he can't remember why he was so frightened. He picks his tea up to sip it. “There was a spider in here.”

“Really? Where?”

“It’s gone now. It was on the desk.”

“Don’t you like spiders, Mycroft?”

“I don’t care for them.”

“Wonderful beasts we think here. Did you avail yourself of the opportunity to look through the catalog?”

“Yes, I did. It was...impressive.” Mycroft tries to remember exactly what it was that he had seen in the catalog, but can only come up with the idea of perfection, and the dim echo of something like  _bees_ rings through his mind. 

“So you can see, Mycroft, that you need have no qualms about being here.” The man smiles.

“I suppose not. But how do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“You know, preserve them. How do you do it?”

The man smiles again. His teeth are very white.

 

“The process by which we preserve the departed is entirely new. Indeed, we venture to say that many of our...clients...have never looked better than they do now.” He points at the book and flips to a page near the back. “You remarked earlier about the perfume. Well, now you can see the reason for it.”

Mycroft looks at the pictures. A series of magnifications of the dead man’s skin.

But it is not skin.

Fields of flowers, tiny flowers. Flowers packed, crushed together. And each flower a face, its mouth agape, staring up at him eyeless and yet still piercing. Tiny flowers where skin should be, made into hands and face and arms.

The dead man is made of flowers.

Mycroft looks up and opens his mouth. No words come out. His fear and apprehension return and his mind reels.  _What?_

“It’s beautiful, don’t you think? No wonder our clients look so wonderful after the process is complete. And now you know the reason for the smell. With all these millions of flowers surrounding us all the time, we could hardly avoid perfuming the air.”

Mycroft's gaze drops away from the man’s face. His smile is too bright, too white. His eyes too dark.

Mycroft swallows and tries to speak again. This time he manages to get out, “How... How do you do this?” his hands are once again twisting fitfully in his lap, his teacup forgotten on the edge of the desk.

“With these.”

The man’s hands opened and the fingers, the beautiful, long fingers, unlace from each other and the cup of flesh is full of spiders.

“This is how we do it. With our little friends. Truly creatures of marvel. When a new client is brought to us, we introduce these extraordinary little creatures to the body of the departed.”

Mycroft cannot move. His mouth opens and closes but no words come out and his breath stinks of flowers.

“Then comes the best part; the transformation occurs when the spiders inject each cell with an extraordinary chemical that turns it into a flower.”

The cup of flesh is offered up, offered across the desk so that Mycroft can see. A single spider emerges from the mass, standing upon the bodies below. It rears up on its back legs and Mycroft sees that its belly is a mouth with a probe, a tongue, sharp and poisonous-looking. The spider’s tongue flicks out and probes the man's flesh. Mycroft opens his mouth to warn him but his throat is ash and his lungs are dry and he has no voice. The fear is back, making it impossible to think, making it impossible to do anything but sit there in fear. The hands stop beneath Mycroft’s face.

“Take a good look.”

Mycroft squints. There is something he can not make out, something he can't remember. If he could just focus, if he could just...He looks closer.

All the spiders look up at him with the same face, empty brown eyes and a mouth like death. They grin up at him.

He jerks back but the chair doesn't move.

“Is something wrong?”

The man is very close to him. Smiling.

He smells. He smells of flowers. 

Mycroft looks at his skin, at the beautiful, flawless skin.

Fields of flowers spread across the face. Tiny white flowers. Each a mouth, open and gaping.

 _Bees,_ he thinks desperately,  _Sherlock in summer with the bees._

“Not trying to leave, are you Mycroft?” That face, that perfect face, still smiling his white, white smile, raised hands in the air. They open.

Mycroft finds his voice. He screams.

Spiders, spiders everywhere, falling onto him, crawling over his sleeves, looking for flesh. Hands spasm over his chest and arms and head, brushing off spiders.

He falls from his chair and then he sees the spiders skittering over the floor. Flailing upwards, he makes for the door.

“Surely you’re not leaving, not now when it's finally getting _interesting?"_ That voice. Mycroft freezes and turns around, and suddenly everything speeds up like lightning crashing to the earth, like a body falling to the ground, like a gunshot, _like, like, like-_

The smell. The smell, everywhere. In his lungs, on his skin, in his eyes. He is choking on it.  _Sherlock, Sherlock help me,_ he tries to choke out, but suddenly there are spiders on his lips, in his mouth, and he can't do anything but choke as they stare at him with Jim Moriarty's eyes. Bodies beneath his feet, crunching into the floor. _But I can still get out,_ he thinks desperately. _No one is coming after me. I just have to get to the door_. _The woman won't stop me. I'll get out of here. Just get to the door. The door._

He grabs the handle.

“Don't go, brother dear. Stay with me.” 

Mycroft looks down at his hand.

Flowers. Tiny white flowers floating through the air.

***

Mycroft jolted awake to the sound of his laptop whirring beside his head, where it rested on his desk. CCTV footage of Sherlock jumping from St. Bart's played silently on the screen, and he held his head in his hands.


End file.
